


Burn All the Calendars

by Catwithamauser



Category: How to Get Away with Murder
Genre: Angst, Domestic Fluff, F/M, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, I Love You
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-21
Updated: 2017-02-28
Packaged: 2018-09-25 23:27:35
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 8,840
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9851714
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Catwithamauser/pseuds/Catwithamauser
Summary: “I ran out for bagels when you were in the shower,” he tells her, indicating the bag. “Noticed you were running late, so.  Got you poppyseed with the chive cream cheese and then one with avocado.  Also poppy.  I know you like onion, but you’ve got a hearing at ten, right and…”“I love you,” she blurts out, words spilling out of her, tumbling from her lips before she even realizes she’s speaking them, echoing through the sudden silence of the kitchen like shots, like bombs.Or, Laurel tells Frank she loves him.  That's the easy part...





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This fic exists mostly because i can see Laurel being really hesitant after everything to tell Frank how she feels and just keeping things to herself even after its obvious and they're back together and things are mostly good.  
> It also exists because I am a monster and angst gives me life. Obviously.

It happens a year after they pick up from the beginning, start over from where they left off, everything different and everything the same. She knows Frank still, knows him almost better than she knows herself, and since he left and came back and yet, and yet, neither of them are the same, almost like two strangers remembering some long distant chance encounter, some drunken one night stand, an echo of the past. They can’t stay apart for long, they never could, but its like relearning a forgotten language, like trying to recall a piano concerto from her childhood lessons from muscle memory. It happens slowly, but it still happens, and slowly they come together, parallel courses eventually forced by the curve of the universe, by the rocking of the tides to merge. 

It happens over two years after the fire, after they’ve mostly healed from its damage, mostly, though she’s certain there will still be lingering scars, lingering echoes in both of them, wounds that are sometimes dull like pressing on a bruise, sometimes sharp like stepping on a pin.

Frank’s told her he loves her half a hundred times, more probably, because Laurel’s certainly lost count, barely even feels the disorienting swoop in her stomach when he says it, no longer finds herself running the words over and over in her mind, turning them, examining them in the light, replaying every detail of the circumstances in which he spoke, like a stone she’s polishing smooth. She no longer doubts them when she hears them, no longer questions what he means by them, whether he means them at all.

No, part of relearning Frank, relearning what it meant to be with Frank meant being willing, being able to accept that he would get there first, again, get to a place where he can tell her things she’s sometimes not ready to hear, certainly not ready to feel herself. Part of relearning what it meant to be together was accepting that sometimes it would be scary, terrifying really, accepting that sometimes she’d always be playing catch up, that she’d have to accept Frank’s certainty as he’d have to accept her doubt, her caution, accept that sometimes she may never get there at all.

Its easier for him, she thinks, sometimes, because he’s the one that’s always certain, always so assured about his feelings, about the things in his heart that beat a fine tattoo of ‘Laurel.’ Or maybe its not, because he’s always taking the first leap into the unknown, always unsure, uncertain whether she’ll react to him with anger, with fear, whether he’s stepping on a place where a landmine was buried so long ago, even Laurel herself had forgotten it was there until the trigger gets tripped.

But it’s the way it is, and hard as it is, its worked for them, all wary caution and tentative steps forward, terrified steps back. They’ve made it here at least, to this place where they only hurt sometimes, where everything is good, or as close to good as either of them seem likely to deserve, likely to earn.

And still, and still, she can’t say it, or rather, can’t say them. The three little words that slip so easily from Frank’s lips, like they haven’t fought so hard to get to this place, like they come naturally to him, like loving her is as easy as breathing. It makes it even worse, that he can say them, just casually toss them out as they’re sitting in bed on Sunday mornings, Frank toying idly with the crossword as Laurel preps her deposition notes for the next day, or when he meets her after work, walks with her to the therapy sessions she still dutifully attends every Thursday evening before going home, cooking her whatever strange thing she’s craving, knowing how ragged, how exhausted therapy leaves her, even now, even lightyears better than when she started, or when he catches her wrist as she’s running out the door, late of course, and presses a kiss to the corner of her lips, whispers it against her mouth, tells her he’s amazed by her and then retreats from her as quickly as he was there.

And still, and still, even half asleep, even ragged and boneless and filled with something approaching bliss, after she’s come two or three or four times she can’t say it, can’t say it when she’s sick and feverish and Frank spends three hours making her the perfect chicken soup, his grandmother’s secret recipe, brings it in with a shy little grin, pleased and proud and hopeful, nervous she won’t like it, even though its amazing, always, still can’t say it when she blows a tire driving to Harrisburg to argue a Supreme Court appeal, calls him crying and panicking an hour up the turnpike and he comes, willingly, without a single word, drives out to somewhere in Lebanon County to give her his car, spends something like forty five minutes changing the tire in the rain before simply driving back, making up some excuse for his boss, shrugging and telling her later that it wasn’t a big deal. But it was, and she knows it. 

And yet, she still can’t say it, can’t repeat those three little simple words, three easy syllables she probably uses thousands of times a day in other contexts, other combinations, but not with him, somehow never with him and it feels almost like she’ll never be able to say them, has simply left the words too long, let them fester and turn sour, or turned them into words she must say at the perfect moment.

She wonders sometimes if she’s too damaged to ever say them, too hurt by her father who told lies because it was easier than the truth, by her mother who said a lot of things that weren't true, weren't even real. She wonders if she even has it in herself to say them, wonders if they even exist anywhere inside her, in a secret, dark place inside her chest, just waiting to be set free. Somehow Laurel doubts it.

She sometimes wonders if what she feels are emotions at all, not some other, lesser thing she’s tricking herself into believing are what other people experience as emotions. Sometimes she doubts even her own mind. She’s been told, shown since she was old enough to understand, the danger emotions pose, the danger feeling anything poses and now well, she’s not sure she even really has it in her to express them. Her mother felt too much, felt everything, and well, if that wasn’t a warning to Laurel about keeping a stranglehold on her emotions, she’s not sure what would be. She loves her mother, she knows that, therapy’s gotten her that far, but the thing that still terrifies her the most is being like her mother, is having her mind fractured, splintered, is not knowing what’s real from what isn’t, is having the one thing she has, the one constant she’s relied on her whole life betray her, stolen from her, is feeling so much that she’s swallowed whole by them, devoured.

Her mother felt everything, every little joy and slight and frustration as though there were nothing else in the world and so Laurel told herself she’d feel nothing at all. And when that had failed, because of course it failed much as it had pained her to admit it, Laurel had decided that if she had to feel, couldn’t simply turn her skin to stone, then she would never, never be like her mother, never let her emotions control her, never give them the power to destroy her as her mother had.

She saw her father too, a man corrupted by the things he felt, by his love for his family, his sense of duty, corrupted until it simply became greed, until her father felt he never had enough, always wanting more, as though he could achieve the things he wanted only through wealth. He spent years trying to buy Laurel’s affection, trying to get her to feel the things he wanted her to with money, material things, trying to turn her into the daughter he wanted her to be rather than the daughter he’d wound up with. And Laurel, always stubborn, had refused to feel anything at all, refused to give him what he wanted even as the guilt tore at her for feeling something else, something she wanted instead of what her father expected. 

She thinks sometimes that she’s lost the power of speech, of turning the things inside her mind into words. She can argue for an hour on a collateral estoppel motion or why bail shouldn’t be reduced or half a hundred other completely esoteric topics, rip through a witness on cross without really even thinking about it and yet she can’t tell the man she loves the things she feels for him, can’t crack open that part of herself, expose it to him, to the world, risk the things that telling him might mean, risk the hurt she’s already flinching away from, even though she knows, knows, Frank would never hurt her.

She is just, Laurel thinks, too fucked up now to change things, to resuscitate the part of her brain that could turn her emotions into speech, that part’s been strangled dead for at least a decade, and so she’s just a quiet, cautious child turned into a quiet, cautious woman, protecting her heart even when doing so hurts her more than taking off her armor would, laying down her sword and admitting she’s fighting only herself. She knows Frank’s surrendered to her years ago, surrendered without any fight at all, would simply give her a crooked grin and slice his own wrists if Laurel decided that’s what she needed from him and yet that doesn’t make it any easier, doesn’t make the words come any easier, any faster, any less painfully when she thinks them. Laurel remains a woman who says more with the words she doesn’t speak, with her silences and her scowls and she’s left simply hoping that it will remain enough for Frank.

And then, one chilly morning in February when the snow they had earlier in the week is turning to slush on the ground, and Laurel’s already dreading the walk to her office, the splatters of grey ice water hitting the back of her calves as she stalks through the streets, Frank hands her a mug off coffee, cream already swirling through it, nods towards the counter.

“I ran out for bagels when you were in the shower,” he tells her, indicating the bag. “Noticed you were running late, so. Got you poppyseed with the chive cream cheese and then one with avocado. Also poppy. I know you like onion, but you’ve got a hearing at ten, right and…”

“I love you,” she blurts out, words spilling out of her, tumbling from her lips before she even realizes she’s speaking them, echoing through the sudden silence of the kitchen like shots, like bombs.

Frank’s staring at her like he’s frozen, like he’s not sure he heard her right, like he’s not even sure she spoke in English and maybe she didn’t, maybe she slipped into Spanish while she wasn’t thinking and he had no idea what she said and maybe, Laurel thinks desperately, she can take it back, can pretend she didn’t say them. But she did and now they’re in the world, called into being and now they’re growing, slowly and now faster, sucking all the air out of the room, crowding out everything else until there’s only the echoes of those three words hammering between them.

He’s staring at her with an expression Laurel’s not sure she’s ever seen before, yearning and shocked and full of something almost worshipful, like he’s staring at the divine, some miracle he never thought he’d witness.

But then he blinks, gives her a crooked little smile, and she pretends she doesn’t see the edge of bitterness, of disappointment when she can’t repeat it, when she can’t acknowledge that it happened, can’t acknowledge the words she spoke. “Your hearing’s at ten, yeah?” he asks again, though she knows his words are tight, too casual and he turns away from her, back to the counter, ostensibly so he can hand her the bagel, but really so she won’t see the way his hands clench against the counter until the knuckles go white, steadying himself as he sucks in a long, shuddering breath. She notices though, she’s always noticing the ways she hurts him. “Wanna meet for lunch when you're done?”

“I…” she starts, falters because she wants to, desperately, and yet she can think of nothing she wants less than to sit at a table with Frank, a hundred people, the entire city crowding around them and the three words she spoke hanging heavy between them but unable to be acknowledged. “Its Judge O’Toole. We’ll have to come back in the afternoon. I’ll need to keep working over lunch.”

It makes her feel terrible, terrible and guilty and making her wonder if Frank thinks maybe she’s just finding excuses to avoid him after what she’s said, after her accidental confession, except O’Toole always runs late, always keeps his late morning cases over through lunch and Frank knows that, knows that excuse or not, she can’t make lunch with him, not today. She wants to apologize, wants to tell him that its not what it looks like, that she means it, means those words even if they slipped out, even if they were accidental, snuck out like a thief. She wants to tell him that she loves him, even if she didn’t intend to say it, that maybe its more real, more truthful because she didn’t think them through, didn’t have time to rethink them, temper them with her caution, with her cold, guarded heart, with the distance that always, always serves to hurt Frank instead of protect her.

Frank nods, jaw clenched, eyes skittering away from her, like he refuses to let her know that he’s hurt, or close to hurt, that she’s done anything to shake his unflappable calm. “I’ll catch you after work then. I was thinking just stuffed peppers for dinner?”

“Sure, that’s fine,” Laurel answers automatically and she stares down at her feet, at the counter, at the bag of bagels resting there, can’t meet his eyes, not anymore, not when she knows, knows she can’t say those words again.

They’re too much, too heavy, too weighty, too irrevocable, irreversible. Everything will change if she speaks them again. She’s not sure what will happen, half suspects that the entire world will shift, tilt on its axis, gravity turning the world upside down, or oxygen just ceasing to be, certain nothing will ever be the same again between them. She knows he won’t hurt her, not ever, not if he can help it, and yet she can’t contain her ever present caution, the thing around her heart that lashes out, that always guards the place that is weakest inside her, broken and shattered and damaged, an angry snarling thing that wants nothing more than to protect her from any threat of harm.

“You’ll be home on time right?” he asks again, cautious now, worried, sensing the armor Laurel cloaks herself in, sensing that she’s retreating from him, scared and hurting, worried that her slip will send Laurel skittering away from her own heart, worried that if he says anything more, pushes her for more, he’ll lose her.

“Yeah.” If she’s being honest though, Laurel never wants to come home, wants to run away to Palm Beach, wants to run away to some isolated Kentucky town, to some remote mountain village in Switzerland, wants to escape from the mistake of the things she couldn’t keep inside herself, the terrible truths that spill from her lips. She wants to tell Frank she meant those words, wants to tell him it wasn’t a lie, wasn’t a mistake or a slip up, wants to tell him that she loves him, that she’s always loved him, some small place inside her heart calling out to him even when she doubted him, even when she hated him, feared him. 

And Frank would never hurt her, loves her beyond reason and she loves him, loves him to the full extent of her heart, that’s the simple truth. And yet its nowhere near that simple, because somehow confessing that to him, letting Frank know the reach of her feelings, putting into words the desperate, unending love she has for him, well, that leaves her more vulnerable than she thinks she can know, leaves her with all her defenses crashing to the ground around her ankles. She loves him and he knows it and yet, and yet those three words, they’re things she can’t take back, can’t pretend she didn’t mean, they give Frank her still beating heart, offer it up to him and ask that he not hurt her.

He has her heart, has everything good within her and the power to destroy it, and yet, its those three words that will make it obvious, let him know he can hurt her at any point he chooses. She knows he won’t, knows he loves her too much for that, and yet, Laurel has always been a creature full of caution, has always realized the people she loves best will be the ones to hurt her worst, her parents proved that time and time again, hurt her until she wasn’t sure there was anything left inside her that could feel at all.

And she swore, once, and then a hundred times more, swore she’d never give that power to anyone else, never let them close to the defenseless places inside her, the places she could still be wounded. Until Frank. And still she pretends he hasn’t been let inside her walls, that she hasn’t lowered every last defense to him, still pretends he has no power over her, that she could walk away, shrug him off as casually as she shrugs out of a dress, leave him without even a backwards glance.

They both know the lie, and still, and still, its one Laurel clings to, one she pretends does more than hurt Frank so she can continue to pretend he can’t hurt her.

“Cool,” he says flatly and he’s crossing his arms over his chest, leaning back against the counter, trying to protect his own heart, distance himself from her because everything Laurel does, every decision she makes is selfish and comes and Frank’s expense. It kills her to see him hurt, and still she lets it happen, still she lets him suffer because she’s a coward. She doesn’t deserve him and she probably never will. And she’ll never do a single thing about it because to lose him would be more than she can take. “I’ll see ya later then.”

Laurel blinks once, then twice, wondering if he’s leaving, walking out on her and it takes her far longer than it should to realize that she’s the one that’s late, that she should’ve been out the door five minutes ago and instead is just standing in the same spot, rooted, unable to move forward, unable to move back, not when it feels like a bomb has gone off in the room and neither of them are entirely sure they’ve made it through without concussions, without limbs blown off.

“Right,” she forces herself to say, forces herself to give something that might have once resembled a tight, chilly smile. She turns mechanically, grabs her jacket and bag and keys, fighting every instinct inside her to turn back, to kiss Frank goodbye, to tell him to have a good day, to go through their normal routine like nothing’s happened. She wants to turn back around and tell him she loves him again. But she can’t do either, doesn’t have the words inside her to repeat them, like when she blurted them out the words simply escaped, took form and were sent running on the loose somewhere through the world and Laurel must recapture them, somehow, find them and grab them and somehow stuff them back inside her chest. And she can’t pretend like everything is normal, like everything’s fine, not when Frank is still looking at her with a mixture of trepidation and longing, like all he wants is to hear those words from her again, like he knows he never will, is already anticipating the hurt, arms up and ready to block the oncoming blow. 

He looks, she thinks, as something Laurel recognizes as tears burn behind her eyes, like a man who’s witnessed a miracle, knows he’s never going to see something so staggering again. It makes her ache for him, long, hot knives of pain deep across her chest, makes her hate herself because it would be so easy to fix, so easy to correct if Laurel had any courage, had any faith in Frank, in the quiet, steady way he loves her, constant and certain. But part of loving her means he knows her, and even though the disappointment she thinks she sees acceptance, just another burden Frank takes on in the often masochistic task of loving her.

“Hey,” he calls out after her, something barely detectable as tension, as strain rumbling across his voice. “You forgot the bagels.”

He approaches her, like he’s approaching some large, unpredictable animal, hands her the bag of bagels as his fingers brush against hers, new tears already springing to her eyes.

“Thanks,” she whispers, can’t meet his eyes as she tucks the paper bag into her handbag. She hopes he knows that every word she speaks, every glance, every touch, they’ve all screamed her ‘I love yous’ to him, all tried to say the three words she can’t speak. She hopes he knows that she loves him, with all her heart, words be damned, hopes that her feelings for him, her devotion to him comes through in all the small, silent ways.

This is where, were it any other day, he would step forward or she would step forward and he would mumble an ‘I love you’ against her mouth as she slid her arms along the muscled span of his back, kissed him sweetly, almost tenderly. But today, well, today.

“I love you,” he tells her as he steps back, just as Laurel takes a stuttering hesitant step forward, falters at his words.

Her smile is brittle, and Frank’s is jagged, broken and they can’t seem to find a way to breach the distance that’s suddenly opened between them, and Laurel turns to leave without another word, wondering if there’s even half a chance they ever will.


	2. Chapter 2

She thinks of nothing else all day, runs the morning over and over in her mind until it loses all meaning, until it makes her stomach churn with nausea at all the thousand things she did wrong, at all the thousand ways she could have stopped herself from tumbling over the edge. She’s distracted and short and can barely focus and she knows she comes dangerously close to blowing the hearing, dangerously close to letting one wrong move topple the whole precarious house of cards she’s managed to construct for herself with sheer furious willpower and Frank’s soft assistance.

She knows they need to talk about it, knows that they can’t just sweep it under the rug and pretend like nothing happened, like she didn’t say it. But she wants to. She had eighteen years to perfect silence and averted eyes and willful blindness, perfected it even before the disaster of Annalise Keating entered her life and silence and avoidance and wary caution sometimes feel like her mother tongue, come more naturally to her than almost anything else.

But loving Frank came naturally too, came as inevitably as breathing, and if she has to choose, make a choice between Frank and protecting herself, protecting her heart, well, its not a choice at all. Frank is her heart, hurting him, risking losing him by staying silent, that’s worse than anything else, than any of the other things that could come her way.

Even so, she knows she’s avoiding things, avoiding him when she doesn’t bother to run to catch her regular bus, lets herself miss it and catches the next one that rolls through, even though it means waiting out in the frigid wind.

She stops too, on the way home, at the corner bodega, buys some fresh mozzarella and an extra loaf of bread, buys some toothpaste for Frank, and the cheap razors he likes, lies and tells herself that they probably needed those things anyway.

There’s a hard kernel of something gnawing its way through her stomach when she gets home, dread and worry and an icy chill that has nothing to do with the outside temperature, apprehension churning through her blood.

“Laurel?” Frank calls out as she slinks in the door. “That you?”

He sounds normal, sounds distracted, at ease, like he hasn’t spent the last nine hours turning Laurel’s words, her lack of words over in his mind, obsessing and wondering and doubting. He sounds like nothing’s happened at all, like he’s perfectly content to ignore the morning, to move on like it was no more than a slip of her tongue, accidental and meaningless. Her stomach sinks and clenches, because its not fair to Frank, not fair to expect him to just pretend she hasn’t hurt him, pretend she’s put her own interests, her own feelings ahead of his own.

“Yeah,” she calls, kicking off her shoes and throwing her keys onto the little table in the hall, wondering how much longer she can delay things, wonder if it can be put off indefinitely. “How’d things go today?”

“I should ask you the same thing,” Frank laughs and Laurel hears him pad out of the kitchen towards her, heard the huff of his laugh and the slide of his feet along the hardwood. “How was O’Toole?”

“I wanna hear about your day,” she says instead, going to him with only a slight flicker of hesitation, of trepidation, placing a kiss to the corner of his mouth, grinning as Frank quickly turns his head, catches her lips with his, both of them breaking away laughing.

“No you don’t,” he huffs, one hand hooking around her elbow, the other lingering at her hip. “I spent most of the day reading trial transcripts till my eyes bled.”

“Better than getting lectured by O’Toole because he didn’t like how I labeled my exhibits,” Laurel says, rolling her eyes and letting her body sag against his chest, letting Frank’s arms come up, circle around her. It would be so easy, so damn easy to let things go back to normal, to ignore the things she said that morning, to just move on, move past it until the next time she can’t keep her feelings, her thoughts to herself. But she can’t, she can’t, its not fair to Frank, not fair to hurt him and hurt him and expect him to simply take it. “Apparently he’s decided they need to be numbered not lettered now. He thinks its more professional.”

“Sounds like O’Toole,” Frank murmurs against her temple. “Guy’s a robot.”

“Except robots are logical,” she complains, pressing closer against his body.

“So that was your day.”

“That was my day,” she agrees.

“Well come get dinner,” he tells her gently, walking their joined bodies backwards towards the kitchen, Laurel’s toes catching agains his ankles as they go. “And wine, lots of wine.”

“You're just trying to get me drunk so you can seduce me,” she smirks against his neck.

“It working?” Frank asks, raising his eyebrows suggestively.

“Might be,” she concedes. “Gotta feed me first.”

He looks briefly affronted but his grin slants and goes crooked. “Don’t I always give you what you want?”

“Always,” Laurel agrees, though the cold feeling of guilt worms its way through her heart, stealing the ghost a smile from her face because he is so, so good to her, better than she deserves and she knows she will never be as good to him as he is to her. She can’t let herself take the easy way out, she owes him that much at least. She owes it to him to try, to be brave, to risk hurt, risk heartbreak, to give him the same trust he’s given her, just this one time.

“What do you got tomorrow?” he asks as they walk, hand in hand towards the kitchen, his thumb tripping over her knuckles.

“Nothing,” she sighs. “Easy day. We can grab lunch if you have time. There’s that new soup place on Sansom.”

“I’m gonna be doing more transcripts I think,” he says, scrubbing a hand across his beard, grinning crookedly. “So I’ll need the break.”

“Poor thing,” she tells him mostly sincerely as they move into the kitchen.

“Sorry we couldn’t make it work today,” he says, dropping her hand and going to the oven, checking on the peppers inside.

“Bagels good at least?”

Laurel nods. “Thanks again for that.”

“Course,” he says simply. “Anything you need. I know you were a little frantic this morning.”

He says it casually, says it like he’s just talking about Laurel running late to work, being worried about her hearing, distracted and flighty. But that’s not it at all, or not all of it certainly. “I, uh, can we talk though?” she asks, voice starting to quaver. “About this morning?”

“I know I know,” Frank tells her, grinning sheepishly, ruefully, crooked and apologetic. “I shouldn’t’ve hit snooze that second time.”

“Wait what?”

“I know you need to hit the button yourself or you’ll just fall back asleep,” Frank continues, shoulders hitching into an approximation of a shrug. “But I was walking by and it went off and god, you had that little crease between your eyebrows and you looked beautiful and grumpy. And I know you didn’t get to bed till two. And I dunno, it seemed like a shame to wake you up.”

“What?” she asks again, still confused but realization slowly dawning on her about what Frank thinks she’s talking about. If she’s deeply asleep, no amount of noise is likely to rouse her, no amount of prodding or cajoling. No, she needs the physical movement required to turn the alarm off, needs to let inertia take over and keep her moving once she’s begun moving.

Letting Frank hit the alarm is as good as it not going off at all because Laurel doesn’t have to do anything about it, can pretend it never went off and she can remain asleep. And that was part of the reason she was late, because the second time the alarm went off he was walking by and slapped at it before she could rouse herself and the whole complicated rhythm of snooze buttons and movement and eventual wakefulness was disrupted. And he must think she’s annoyed or angry with him for it.

And that’s so far beyond the truth, and such a Frank thing to assume and such a Frank thing to assume about Laurel and it sends little shivers of guilt and something almost like grief, like mourning down her spine because of course Frank assumed that she wanted to talk about something he did, because he’s selfless and goes out of his way with every breath to make things good for her, to give her the things she needs to be happy, or content, or whatever close second she’s able to find. Of course he assumed it was something he did because he’s always focused on her needs, on what she wants, always putting her first. He loves her the way someone should be loved, someone who isn’t her, who isn't fucked up like she is, broken and blackened and ugly. He deserves better than her.

Frank deserves better than being with someone where its just assumed they need to talk about something he did wrong, because she never apologizes, not really, never drops her defenses, the armor around her heart long enough to really mean it, not when it counts at least. She loves him, in her own twisted, stunted way, but it will never be enough, never be enough for the way he loves her, loves her like a goddess, like his salvation, loves her with no hope of reward or benefit, just loves her because that’s what his heart was created to do, but Laurel knows she will never be able to love him enough for the way he deserves. It makes her sad, but beyond that, it makes her hate herself, worse than she does already, makes Laurel hate the things in herself that keep Frank chained to her, keep her from letting him go, letting him find someone better, easier, someone who can love him with more than broken, damaged bits.

And he knows it, knows she doesn’t, that she can’t love him as she should, knows that any wrongs should be his and simply accepts that even though that’s so, so far beyond the truth.

“This morning,” Frank explains, somehow thinking her question still pertains to the alarm and running late and…

“No Frank,” she cuts him off, voice coming out far harsher than she intended. “I don’t wanna talk about that.”

“Then I dunno what I did,” he tells her, giving her a slanted, sheepish grin, eyebrows raising like he’s waiting to be told, an eager, obedient dog waiting to be told that he’s good. And he’s good, so, so good and he’s a better man than anyone she knows and she wishes she was good enough for him.

“You didn’t do anything,” she assures him, quickly, hating that Frank feels that he did something, that he’s somehow at fault, feeling even more hopelessly guilty because its not Frank, its never Frank, its always the dented, crumpled parts of her.

And she’s trying to think of a way to tell him what she needs to tell him, all the mess of things she wants to say that somehow convey that she loves him, that she’s sorry, that she wishes he didn’t love her but knows she’s not strong enough to live with herself if he didn’t, trying to somehow fit together everything she wants to say into some string of words that isn’t just her sobbing into his chest.

And when the words come they’re not at all what she intended to say, but again, they’re the only things that can.

“I love you,” she tells him again, words spilling from her lips like prayers.

“Love you too, babe,” Frank replies casually, as though there’s nothing significant about Laurel’s words, as though he’s heard her say them half a hundred times in the last hour alone and she doesn’t know whether to sob with gratitude or be angry because Frank is perfect and infuriating and she’s spent all day obsessing about how to confront her words, confront the things she said, apologize for having taken so goddamn long to say them or try to take them back or simply pretend nothing happened and Frank simply accepts them, has already forgotten there was anything important, anything weighty about them.

“I love you,” she repeats, more forcefully now, a little edge to her words, trying to get him to understand maybe, or perhaps her words are just like a rock rolling down a hill, picking up speed, picking up more and more rocks until one falling stone becomes a landslide, becomes some catastrophic, unstoppable force.

“Yeah,” Frank says with a little shrug, a little quirk to his eyebrows. “I know. I love you too.”

“I’m trying to tell you I love you here,” she snaps, jaw clenched tight and her hands balled into fists as she steps away from him. “And you’re not listening.”

Frank laughs, actually has the gall to fucking laugh at her, a low rumbling chuckle that at any other time would set her breath catching and desire pooling low in her stomach. “I think I’m listening better than you’re giving me credit for,” he tells her finally, laughter still tumbling across his words. She wants to shove him backwards, wants to take two long steps forward and press her hands against his chest and shove with all her strength, send him stumbling back into the counter, make him rethink laughing because its not fucking funny, its fucking terrifying and she’s telling him she loves him and he’s fucking laughing and Laurel can’t decide if she wants to cry or scream or turn and flee. “You tell me you love me all the time.”

“I…” Laurel startles, still not sure whether she doesn’t want be angry at Frank for laughing. She stops, blinks, like the whole world has suddenly gone still, frozen. “What?”

He shrugs again, casual, as though he’s telling her the most obvious thing in the world. “You tell me you love me all the time. Don’t needa put it in words like that, cause I know, I can see it.”

“What?” she asks again, gaping, dumbly, like a fish, she thinks, mouth opening and closing and trying to get air into her lungs, trying to get air into her muddled brain. She feels like all words have been stolen from her but one, confusion and concern the only things she can understand.

“You tell me you love me all the time,” he repeats, a little grin, almost unnoticed slipping across his face. “Like when you came to the Flyers game with me and Jimmy and his wife last week, even though you knew he’d get drunk and try to hit on you and she’d try to convince you to buy a buncha Mary Kay stuff you don't need. And when my dad had surgery, you stayed all night and drove my mom home the next morning so she could get some sleep and then you came back and sat with me some more because you knew I didn’t wanna be alone. And I bet that bag you got from the bodega has toothpaste in it right? The cinnamon kind I like?”

He trails off, prompting and Laurel nods, because of course it does. He was running out of toothpaste last week and she knows he didn’t manage to grab any since because he always, always leaves it till the last minute and winds up running out completely and Laurel notices, picks up a new tube, stashes it in the cabinet below the sink so that when he runs out and panics, he always has an extra.

“See?” Frank says, that same note of laughter running across his voice, taking a quick step towards her, like he’s testing her, testing whether she can handle him close to her, approaching her, testing whether she wants her distance. “Don’t have to tell me you love me. You do plenty to show me you do.”

“Frank,” she growls because none of that matters, none of that means anything, all just normal day to day basic actions of living with someone, being with someone.

“Everything you do,” he tells her gently, his eyes soft. “Its like a, I dunno, a silent love letter or something. All the stuff you do is because you love me.”

“Frank, I…” she starts, falters.

“Its not the big stuff,” he tells her, somehow knowing exactly what Laurel’s thinking, the doubts and worries that cloud her mind, the nagging concerns that she’ll never be good enough for Frank, never really be worthy of him. “Its toothpaste and hockey and driving my mom home. Its something you don’t have to do, but you do, cause you love me. Don’t gotta say the words when you’re telling me all the time.”

“I love you,” she says again, like she can’t stop saying it, like now she’s finally able to say it, finally summoned the courage or the madness from somewhere she can’t stop, can’t keep the words inside her.

He laughs again and finally, finally Laurel finds herself laughing too, finds it spilling out of her like water. “Do I gotta pull a Star Wars and tell you I know?”

“I think you already did,” she says laughing despite herself, finding her cheeks suddenly wet with tears, relief and wanting and desperate love and something like exhaustion pouring from her. Its easy, so stunningly easy that she wants to laugh, wants to cry, because she’s confessed everything, spilled the truth to Frank and nothing, nothing has changed, not a single thing has changed about the world, about her or Frank or their relationship or the things they feel, not a single thing has changed by the three simple words she’s confessed. Nothing has changed because they haven’t changed anything at all, her words haven’t told Frank anything he didn’t already know, haven’t opened any new doors or illuminated anything that wasn’t already clear. Just like he knew he loved her long before Laurel was ready to hear those words, he knew her feelings before she had made it to a place where she could speak them without fear, without hesitation or panic or doubt.

“I love you too you know,” he tells her then, smirking. “In case you had any doubt.”

“I never have any doubts about you,” she assures him, scrubbing angrily at her cheeks, at the moisture slipping across the angle of her cheekbones.

“I know its hard sometimes,” he says, taking another small step towards Laurel, still cautious, still acting like he thinks she’s gonna bolt, gonna balk. “Saying what you feel, putting it out in the open, worrying its gonna be used against you.”

“But I know you won’t hurt me,” she says, stepping forward, slipping her hands around his waist, her cheek pressed tight against his chest, feeling the low thrum of his heartbeat against her skin.

“Doesn't mean you don’t worry,” Frank replies, as if its that easy, that completely, totally simple, for him to accept the hesitation in Laurel’s bones, that’s been bred into her, the things in her that flinch away from affection, from trust, sometimes from Frank himself. “Doesn’t mean its easy to be vulnerable, give someone the power to hurt you.”

“But you already had it,” she murmurs. “Whether or not I said anything. And you knew it.”

“I did,” he nods, hands wrapping around her, pressing a kiss against her temple, thumb slipping across the sharp angle of her cheek. “But its still hard, I get it. Especially after everything; your folks and all the shit they put you through.”

“Its not hard for you,” she points out. “Its never been hard for you.”

“Its not hard,” Frank agrees with a low chuckle. “Its terrifying, but its not hard.”

“Terrifying’s a good word for it,” she huffs, rolling her eyes until Frank notices, nips at her lower lip with his teeth as Laurel blinks away the last of her tears.

“It’d be more terrifying if I didn’t have you,” he tells her with that perfect, certain bluntness that Frank has, the way he can say exactly what he feels, find exactly the right thing to say to get to the truth of things, the heart of things, with none of the hesitation, none of the guardedness that everyone else cloaks themselves in, none of the worry about repercussions or reactions, just open, honest about the way he feels, about the love, the devotion he has for her. “And I’m never gonna hurt you, not if I can help it. You know that right?”

“Course I know that,” Laurel tells him, rolling her eyes, sliding her lips across his throat, teeth catching against the swell of his Adam’s apple.

“Good,” he huffs, kissing her again, slipping his hand into hers. “Now that we’ve got that sorted out, you ready for dinner?”

“Yeah,” she nods, letting him tug on her hand, following him towards the counter, towards the bottle of wine already waiting there and the timer slowly clicking down on the oven. “I love you, y’know. I just, I wanna tell you that again.”

“Tell me as many times as you want,” he smirks, pausing and leaning into her, lips just brushing against her cheek. “Can’t imagine I’m gonna get tired of hearing you say it.”

“Can’t imagine I’m gonna stop now that I’ve started,” she laughs, and there’s a sudden swooping in her stomach, a sudden lightness rippling through her, like laughter taken form, like golden sunlight, like she’s drank an entire case of champagne and now she’s nothing but bubbles, hissing and popping and glowing. She’d call it happiness if she didn’t know it was so much more, some other thing beyond happiness she’s not entirely sure how to name yet. She doesn’t know why she hesitated, doesn’t know why she had any doubt about telling Frank how she felt, doesn’t know why she ever doubted how he’d react to her because of course he reacted this way, of course he knew already that she loved him, of course he accepted that it took her this long, as though there were no other possible moments for her to have told him, no other possible ways she could have confessed her love for him.

“Good,” he tells her, hand tightening around hers and his grin going crooked, teasing. “Don’t. I like hearing it. I like you.”

“I love you,” she repeats, feels like she never wants to stop saying it, never wants to stop telling him. “I love you so much.”

“So,” Frank drawls before he kisses her again, grins spreading both their mouths wide. “You have any other big announcements? Get a promotion? Spontaneously moving to Hawai’i?”

“You wanna?” she asks, grin crooked, almost teasing now. “Pack up and move someplace warm?”

“Laurel,” he tells her seriously, though there’s still a sharp edge to his grin that makes her want to slide her fingers through his beard, smooth out the roughness, the sharpness of his mouth. “You wanna go to Hawai’i, or France or, I dunno, Kazakhstan, I’m going with you.”

“Kazakhstan?”

“Sounded better than the moon,” he shrugs, as Laurel does reach up, slide her palm against the rasp of his beard. “But I’d follow you anywhere. That’s what I want you to know.”

“Course,” she replies with her own little shrug, fingers tripping against his cheek. Its so, so much easier now, now that he knows she loves him, that she knows she can speak those words without the world ending, without them somehow being used like a secret spell against her, like a weapon. She doesn’t know why she hesitated, why she left it for so long, but she’s embarrassed that she did, when its been so obvious she loves Frank, that he loves her beyond words, beyond sense, that trying to lock her emotions inside her heart didn’t protect anyone, only served to hurt the two of them. “But I’m never going anywhere without you, anywhere you didn’t wanna go too.”

And now, somehow, someway, she sees his grin go feral, feels it under her hand. “What about coming?” he asks and Laurel groans because she walked into that one didn’t she, should’ve known that’s where Frank’s mind would go, because if there’s a way for his mind to go to sex, it’ll go there, and she sometimes forgets about it, sometimes overlooks because hers doesn’t. Or not always. But she’s been with Frank long enough she really, really ought to have expected it, expected the crooked grin he now flashes her, the low note of his voice, dropping almost to a growl and the idle patterns he’s tracing along the skin of her lower back, her hipbones, the way his body leans into hers, the way his breath fans against her cheek, her neck, setting a little shiver running across her spine, her shoulders, setting her own breath catching against her throat. She should have expected this, but somehow she didn’t, somehow he still manages to catch her off guard, surprise her by how much he wants her always, by the echoing response from her own body answering the call of his, by how much love they can pack into the meager spaces of their bodies. “You ever gonna come without me?”

“That’s up to you I think,” she murmurs as her lips catch against his throat, against his hammering pulse point, feeling his breath speed up, loving the way she can reduce him to this, this creature who's only focus is her, on the things her hands, her lips, her body can make him feel, reduce him to a creature ruled by need and depthless affection, this creature ruled by love, his love for her and her love for him, they love they create together. She loves, she loves, him, them, their life together, the wide expanse of an unknown future spreading out before them. “But you promised to get me drunk before you tried and seduced me. I’m a classy girl, I’m gonna hold you to that.”

“Oh, absolutely,” Frank rasps, fingers fumbling with the hook, the zipper of her skirt, his other hand slipping along her thigh and up, underneath her skirt, teasing and smirking and so, so cocky. “You’re classy as hell. You’re definitely gonna stop me before my hands get where they’re going, definitely gonna stop me before they get where you want them.”

“I might,” she gasps, though the trembling in her voice betrays that lie. His fingers slide further up the back of her thigh, setting every inch of her skin, every nerve ending alight, bursting with desire, with heavy, desperate wanting. “I could.”

“So do it,” he tells her, lips and teeth and tongue nipping at her collarbone as his hands climb higher, a challenge in every play of his fingers, every shift of his muscles. “Stop me.”

She tries, she really does, tries to summon the words from somewhere to tell him to stop, but she’s tired of saying things she doesn’t mean, tired of keeping the things she wants, the things she wants to say locked tight inside her chest, burning sharp against her heart, and she’s spent enough time denying herself, spent enough time keeping Frank guessing at the things she feels for him until he had to learn the language of her silences. She doesn’t want to hide from him anymore. So she says nothing, just gasps against his tongue as Frank slips it along hers, as his hands climb higher and higher, up to the swell of her ass, rucking up the material of her skirt around her hips. 

“No,” she replies. “Never. And you better not stop either.”

Frank’s smile is crooked and blinding and bright, full of that same worshipful weight she saw on his face earlier that morning, full of reverence and awe and a desire that sets his pupils widening. “No,” he echoes, voice light with laughter. “Not for anything in the world.”

She swallows down his breath, swallows down the hitch of his laughter, breathes it back into his lungs in shallow gasps and the whispered cadence of her ‘I love you’s,’ a slow, smooth mantra that she is no longer sure she can stop, a dam that’s burst, overflowing its banks and she can’t seem to find it in herself to care about the destruction bound to follow in its path, only cares that Frank know, finally, have no doubt about the things she feels for him, cares only that she make up for lost time, tell him and tell him until her voice goes rough and rasping, until she loses it completely, can’t imagine a world in which she ever stops, ever tries to hide anymore in an effort to protect herself, shield herself from Frank, from her own heart. Loving him doesn’t make her weak, doesn’t make her hurt, it makes her strong and powerful and makes her love him even more, the feeling growing until she’s not sure it won’t crowd out her heart, won’t strangle every other feeling until all she can feel is love. She’s not sure anymore that’s not something she shouldn’t want.

“I want you more than anything in the world,” he tells her, breath tattooing her skin, words branding across her heart, giving her the strength to be weak, the vulnerability to be strong. “And I’m never gonna stop.”

“Better not,” she tries to growl, winds up just laughing against his mouth, laughing and gasping and curling her body into the fervent press of his hands, full of love like worship, full of love like salvation, like certainty, like water and fire and air and sunlight itself because there’s no reason to fear, no reason to worry, there’s just her and Frank and the glide of his hand and the press of his lips and the laughter that spills from her lungs and into his and back again.

**Author's Note:**

> Title comes from the Mountain Goats song "Twin Human Highway Flares" which is basically a love song for the perpetually sad/possibly doomed and all the moments that make being in love with someone both possible and inevitable...


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